I am pleased to announce the publication of a new book edited by Clare Kosnik, Simone White, Clive Beck, Bethan Marshall, A. Lin Goodwin, and Jean Murray entitled Building bridges: Rethinking literacy teacher education in a digital era.

This book emerged from presentations made at a working conference in London in 2014. I was honoured to be a part of both the conference and this book. My own chapter provides a conceptual overview of some of the tensions and challenges of the concept of digital technologies in teacher education. It concludes with some ideas from my Maker Pedagogy project.

Sense Publishers always provides a free preview of the first chapter of books that it publishes, and that means anyone can download my chapter for free by clicking here.

My sincere thanks to the editorial team for their hard work and particularly to Clare Kosnik for inviting me to be a part of her research into digital technologies several years ago, even before this project started. You should check out her blog at: https://literacyteaching.net/

I am pleased to announce the launch of my new journal, Teacher Learning and Professional Development:

Teacher Learning and Professional Development (TLPD) is an open-access, peer-reviewed journal that is broadly concerned with the challenges and complexities of learning to teach. We frame learning to teach as a lifelong process that includes formal pre-service and continuing education programs for teachers and a variety of informal experiences that contribute to teachers’ professional knowledge. We also recognize that the term teacher is typically taken to refer those who work as elementary or secondary school teachers; however, we adopt an holistic definition of teacher learning and professional development that includes the learning and development activities of anyone who teaches or self-identifies as a teacher. This expanded definition thus includes, but is not limited to, K-12 teachers, post-secondary teachers, adult educators, museum educators, community-based educators, coaches, and performing arts teachers.

I am pleased to announced the first article from my research program on maker pedagogy, which was just published in a special issue of the Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies. The piece is conceptual and considers some of the opportunities and challenges to adopting what we have defined as maker pedagogy in science education. Special thank you to my co-author, Andrea Sator, for her hard work on this project.

We are committed to publishing a portion of our work in open access format and are pleased to state that the article is freely available at:

Making is a process that people engage in to design, create, and develop things that are of value and use to them personally or for their community. The recent popular (and sometimes commercial) Maker Movement is rooted in making and traces its lineage from a variety of historical precedents, including ancient traditions of arts and crafts fairs, tinkering and inventing using analog technologies, and hacking and programing with digital technologies. So-called “Maker Spaces” often function as co-ops that allow people to come together to build things, share expensive tools, and learn skills from one another. In this article, we will use the maker movement as a catalyst to reveal both some perennial challenges of and potential ways forward for curriculum studies of science and technology teacher education. In particular, we suggest that maker pedagogy, an approach to working with teacher candidates drawing from principles in the maker movement represents a potentially useful way forward in engaging teacher candidates in thinking about curriculum and working with students.

What do I mean by maker pedagogy? My working definition, which I developed in January 2014 as a part of the winning grant proposal, was:

Maker Pedagogy is an approach that utilizes the principles of ethical hacking (i.e., deconstructing existing technology for the purpose of creating knowledge), adapting (i.e., the freedom to use a technology for new purposes), designing (i.e., selecting components and ideas to solve problems), and creating (i.e., archiving contextual knowledge obtained through engaging in the process of making, as well as the actual tangible products) as part of an overall way of working with those interesting in learning about science and technology. (Bullock, 2014)

Be sure to check makerpedagogy.org often, as my research team and I will be sharing information about our research as it progresses as well as blogging about our developing understanding of maker pedagogy.

My thanks to: the participants who are joining us in Phase I of the research, Andrea Sator (research assistant for the project and PhD student in ETLD at SFU), and to SSHRC for providing the funding.

The fourth class of my course “Victorian Science: An Era of Discovery” (link), offered through SFU Continuing Studies, occurred today. It was a pleasure to see all of you

The topic this week was The Science of Sound. The class description:

We will explore ingenious equipment built to explore the nature of sound, paying particular attention to connections between the development of technological devices and ideas about human physiology, the technological development of several musical instruments and cultural shift in ideas about the nature of sound and noise.

Click on the “download” link, which will open a new window.

You will then be asked to enter the password given in class to view the document. Type in the password, then click submit

You can then view the document on your screen.

Click the printer icon to print the document.

Click the download arrow (the arrow pointing downwards) to download the document.

Notes:

If you do not see the icons for printing and downloading at the top of your browser window, move your mouse cursor up to the top of the window to make the icons appear.

If you want to download (save a copy of) the document to your computer, you will have to enter the password each time you open the document.

I am pleased to announce the publication of a new fact sheet by the Canadian Education Association entitled “What is effective teacher professional development?”

Teachers routinely engage in a variety of formal (i.e. district-directed) and informal (i.e. self-directed) professional development experiences. My co-author Andrea Sator and I reviewed recent literature on teachers’ professional development to come up with five research-informed recommendations for effective teacher professional development.

The fourth class of my course “Victorian Science: An Era of Discovery” (link), offered through SFU Continuing Studies, occurred today. It was a pleasure to see all of you

The topic this week was Science, Exploration, and Culture. The class description:

The Victorian era’s pursuit of scientific knowledge was, in many ways, bound with a desire for exploration, to further the interests of the Empire, and an interaction with changing cultural ideas. We will explore these relationships by examining the contributions of selected scientist-explorers.Students in the class can download the course notes for today by following the instructions below:

Click on the “download” link, which will open a new window.

You will then be asked to enter the password given in class to view the document. Type in the password, then click submit

You can then view the document on your screen.

Click the printer icon to print the document.

Click the download arrow (the arrow pointing downwards) to download the document.

Notes:

If you do not see the icons for printing and downloading at the top of your browser window, move your mouse cursor up to the top of the window to make the icons appear.

If you want to download (save a copy of) the document to your computer, you will have to enter the password each time you open the document.

The third class of my course “Victorian Science: An Era of Discovery” (link), offered through SFU Continuing Studies, occurred today. It was a pleasure to see all of you

The topic this week was Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. The class description:

Darwin’s theories continue to provoke discussion even today. We will explore broader conversations about geology and evolution that set the context for his work before exploring some key ideas in depth. We will also explore the debate surrounding these on their publication and throughout the late 19th century.

Students in the class can download the course notes for today by following the instructions below:

Click on the “download” link, which will open a new window.

You will then be asked to enter the password given in class to view the document. Type in the password, then click submit

You can then view the document on your screen.

Click the printer icon to print the document.

Click the download arrow (the arrow pointing downwards) to download the document.

Notes:

If you do not see the icons for printing and downloading at the top of your browser window, move your mouse cursor up to the top of the window to make the icons appear.

If you want to download (save a copy of) the document to your computer, you will have to enter the password each time you open the document.

The second class of my course “Victorian Science: An Era of Discovery” (link), offered through SFU Continuing Studies, occurred today. It was a pleasure to see so many new and returning faces! Welcome to all.

The topic this week was Electricity and Magnetism. The class description:

Electricity and magnetism were hot topics in the Victorian Era. We will examine how a few key insights and relatively simple experiments sparked a revolution in scientific understanding. We will focus on the “Maxwellians,” a group of British physicists who developed technologies making use of new ideas about electricity and magnetism.

Students in the class can download the course notes for today by following the instructions below:

Click on the “download” link, which will open a new window.

You will then be asked to enter the password given in class to view the document. Type in the password, then click submit

You can then view the document on your screen.

Click the printer icon to print the document.

Click the download arrow (the arrow pointing downwards) to download the document.

Notes:

If you do not see the icons for printing and downloading at the top of your browser window, move your mouse cursor up to the top of the window to make the icons appear.

If you want to download (save a copy of) the document to your computer, you will have to enter the password each time you open the document.

The first class of my course “Victorian Science: An Era of Discovery” (link), offered through SFU Continuing Studies, occurred today. It was a pleasure to see so many new and returning faces! Welcome to all.

The topic this week was Science as Public Performance. The class description:

We will look at the changing public attitudes toward science and technology in the Victorian era and explore the contributions of those individuals who spent a significant part of their careers engaging the public in thinking about science and the role of the media in communicating scientific ideas.

Students in the class can download the course notes for today by following the instructions below:

Click on the “download” link, which will open a new window.

You will then be asked to enter the password given in class to view the document. Type in the password, then click submit

You can then view the document on your screen.

Click the printer icon to print the document.

Click the download arrow (the arrow pointing downwards) to download the document.

Notes:

If you do not see the icons for printing and downloading at the top of your browser window, move your mouse cursor up to the top of the window to make the icons appear.

If you want to download (save a copy of) the document to your computer, you will have to enter the password each time you open the document.